The Victoria League for Commonwealth Friendship Dinner to Mark the Official Birthday of Her Majesty The Queen

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I thank the Victoria League for inviting Kaye and me to this marvellous celebration of the 89th birthday of Her Majesty The Queen.

In the nine months since I was sworn in, Kaye and I have had the pleasure of three royal encounters – all in the space of a few hectic weeks last year.   

We hosted Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal when she visited Brisbane in October to attend the annual Agricultural Societies conference and to meet representatives of organisations of which she is Patron.

We then hosted His Royal Highness the Earl of Wessex during his visit to Queensland in November to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Duke of Edinburgh International Awards.

Kaye and I also had the great honour and privilege of being granted an audience at Buckingham Palace by Her Majesty The Queen on the tenth of October 2014.

Some of you may have seen on the Government House Twitter and Facebook pages the delightful photograph of Her Majesty’s beaming smile during the audience.

Her Majesty was engaging, gracious, generous with her time and well-informed on both the role of Governor and on Queensland.  It was a wonderful experience to meet her in private for the first time.   

Convention rightly dictates that the discussion remain confidential.  But I can say without breaking any confidences that we came away greatly inspired, and armed with good advice for a Governor with seventy-three days’ experience from a monarch with more than sixty years’ experience.

I was all of three and a half years old when Her Majesty acceded to the throne in 1952, and I retain memories of the tour of Australia by Her Majesty and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh two years later. Brisbane and Queensland were agog.  Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to see the royal couple.   

I vividly recall, as a Maryborough boy, being bussed to Bundaberg, where we stood with our flags at the showgrounds and waved excitedly as The Queen, with The Duke, passed by in the open vehicle around the arena.

Since that time, there has been social, political and economic change of unprecedented speed and scope.  The geo-political landscape has been transformed.  We now use technologies every day that would have seemed like magic to that little boy who saw The Queen in 1954.

In the midst of all this change, Her Majesty has remained, and still remains, a powerful symbol of continuity and stability, and a peerless exemplar of duty and service. 

This is palpable as Kaye and I meet with our fellow citizens. Our regional travels have already, over ten months, extended from the Gold Coast to Yorke Island in the Torres Strait, to Winton and Boulia in the Central West, and to Goondiwindi then Charleville in the South West.  In the twenty-eight regional centres we have visited so far, and in Brisbane – evidenced recently by the four thousand or so people who visited Government House last Saturday over four hours, the support for the Office of Governor, and thence the Monarch, is warm and strong.

We, like you, look forward to the major milestone in The Queen’s reign in September that Mr Willcocks mentioned during the Loyal Toast. That will be a remarkable achievement in a reign that is already remarkable.  

Remarkable too has been Her Majesty’s partnership with the Duke of Edinburgh.  Their sixty-eighth wedding anniversary is less than six months away.

We are all deeply indebted to Her Majesty for her service to Australia and to the Commonwealth. 

We continue to extend to her the greatest respect, admiration and affection for all she has done, in the words of one anthem sung earlier,  to Advance Australia Fair. 

And we borrow, with the greatest esteem, the sentiment of these words from the other anthem: Long to reign over us.

Thank you.